Testing for a change in persistence in the presence of non-stationary volatility

In this paper we consider tests for the null of (trend-) stationarity against the alternative of a change in persistence at some (known or unknown) point in the observed sample, either from I(0) to I(1) behaviour or vice versa, of, inter alia, Kim (2000). We show that in circumstances where the innovation process displays non-stationary unconditional volatility of a very general form, which includes single and multiple volatility breaks as special cases, the ratio-based statistics used to test for persistence change do not have pivotal limiting null distributions. Numerical evidence suggests that this can cause severe over-sizing in the tests. In practice it may therefore be hard to discriminate between persistence change processes and processes with constant persistence but which display time-varying unconditional volatility. We solve the identified inference problem by proposing wild bootstrap-based implementations of the tests. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the bootstrap tests perform well in finite samples. An empirical application to a variety of measures of U.S. price inflation data is provided.Persistence change; non-stationary volatility; wild bootstrap

Testing for co-integration in vector autoregressions with non-stationary volatility

Many key macro-economic and financial variables are characterised by permanent changes in unconditional volatility. In this paper we analyse vector autoregressions with nonstationary (unconditional) volatility of a very general form, which includes single and multiple volatility breaks as special cases. We show that the conventional rank statistics of Johansen (1988,1991) are potentially unreliable. In particular, their large sample distributions depend on the integrated covariation of the underlying multivariate volatility process which impacts on both the size and power of the associated co-integration tests, as we demonstrate numerically. A solution to the identified inference problem is provided by considering wild bootstrap-based implementations of the rank tests. These do not require the practitioner to specify a parametric model for volatility, nor to assume that the pattern of volatility is common to, or independent across, the vector of series under analysis. The bootstrap is shown to perform remarkably well in practice.Cointegration; non-stationary volatility; trace and maximum eigenvalue tests; wild bootstrap

Co-integration rank tests under conditional heteroskedasticity

In this paper we analyse the properties of the conventional Gaussian-based co-integrating rank tests of Johansen (1996) in the case where the vector of series under test is driven by possibly non-stationary, conditionally heteroskedastic (martingale difference) innovations. We first demonstrate that the limiting null distributions of the rank statistics coincide with those derived by previous authors who assume either i.i.d. or stationary martingale difference innovations. We then propose wild bootstrap implementations of the co-integrating rank tests and demonstrate that the associated bootstrap rank statistics replicate the first- order asymptotic null distributions of the rank statistics. We show that the same is also true of the corresponding rank tests based on the i.i.d. bootstrap of Swensen (2006). The wild bootstrap, however, has the important property that, unlike the i.i.d. bootstrap, it preserves in the re-sampled data the pattern of heteroskedasticity present in the original shocks. Consistent with this, numerical evidence suggests that, relative to tests based on the asymptotic critical values or the i.i.d. bootstrap, the wild bootstrap rank tests perform very well in small samples under a variety of conditionally heteroskedastic innovation processes. An empirical application to the term structure of interest rates is also given.Co-integration; trace and maximum eigenvalue rank tests; conditional heteroskedasticity; IID bootstrap; wild bootstrap

Testing for Co-integration in Vector Autoregressions with Non-Stationary Volatility

Many key macro-economic and ?nancial variables are characterised by permanent changes in unconditional volatility. In this paper we analyse vector autoregressions with non-stationary (unconditional) volatility of a very general form, which includes single and multiple volatility breaks as special cases. We show that the conventional rank statistics computed as in Johansen (1988,1991) are potentially unreliable. In particular, their large sample distributions depend on the integrated covariation of the underlying multivariate volatility process which impacts on both the size and power of the associated co-integration tests, as we demonstrate numerically. A solution to the identi?ed inference problem is provided by considering wild bootstrap-based implementations of the rank tests. These do not require the practitioner to specify a parametric model for volatility, nor to assume that the pattern of volatility is common to, or independent across, the vector of series under analysis. The bootstrap is shown to perform very well in practice.co-integration; non-stationary volatility; trace and maximum eigenvalue tests; wild bootstrap

Bootstrap co-integration rank testing: the role of deterministic variables and initial values in the bootstrap recursion

In this paper we investigate the role of deterministic components and initial values in bootstrap likelihood ratio type tests of co-integration rank. A number of bootstrap procedures have been proposed in the recent literature some of which include estimated deterministic components and non-zero initial values in the bootstrap recursion while others do the opposite. To date, however, there has not been a study into the relative performance of these two alternative approaches. In this paper we fill this gap in the literature and consider the impact of these choices on both OLS and GLS de-trended tests, in the case of the latter proposing a new bootstrap algorithm as part of our analysis. Overall, for OLS de-trended tests our findings suggest that it is preferable to take the computationally simpler approach of not including estimated deterministic components in the bootstrap recursion and setting the initial values of the bootstrap recursion to zero. For GLS de-trended tests, we find that the approach of Trenkler (2009), who includes a restricted estimate of the deterministic component in the bootstrap recursion, can improve finite sample behaviour further.Co-integration; trace tests; i.i.d. bootstrap; OLS and GLS de-trending

Bootstrap Sequential Determination of the Co-integration Rank in VAR Models

Determining the co-integrating rank of a system of variables has become a fundamental aspect of applied research in macroeconomics and finance. It is wellknown that standard asymptotic likelihood ratio tests for co-integration rank of Johansen (1996) can be unreliable in small samples with empirical rejection frequencies often very much in excess of the nominal level. As a consequence, bootstrap versions of these tests have been developed. To be useful, however, sequential procedures for determining the co-integrating rank based on these bootstrap tests need to be consistent, in the sense that the probability of selecting a rank smaller than (equal to) the true co-integrating rank will converge to zero (one minus the marginal significance level), as the sample size diverges, for general I(1) processes. No such likelihood-based procedure is currently known to be available. In this paper we fill this gap in the literature by proposing a bootstrap sequential algorithm which we demonstrate delivers consistent cointegration rank estimation for general I(1) processes. Finite sample Monte Carlo simulations show the proposed procedure performs well in practice.co-integration; trace test; sequential rank determination; i.i.d. bootstrap; wild bootstrap

Lag Length Selection for Unit Root Tests in the Presence of Nonstationary Volatility

A number of recently published papers have focused on the problem of testing for a unit root inthe case where the driving shocks may be unconditionally heteroskedastic. These papers have,however, assumed that the lag length in the unit root test regression is a deterministic functionof the sample size, rather than data-determined, the latter being standard empirical practice. Inthis paper we investigate the finite sample impact of unconditional heteroskedasticity onconventional data-dependent methods of lag selection in augmented Dickey-Fuller type unit roottest regressions and propose new lag selection criteria which allow for the presence ofheteroskedasticity in the shocks. We show that standard lag selection methods show a tendency toover-fit the lag order under heteroskedasticity, which results in significant power losses in the(wild bootstrap implementation of the) augmented Dickey-Fuller tests under the alternative. Thenew lag selection criteria we propose are shown to avoid this problem yet deliver unit root testswith almost identical finite sample size and power properties as the corresponding tests based onconventional lag selection methods when the shocks are homoskedastic.econometrics;

Lag Length Selection for Unit Root Tests in the Presence of Nonstationary Volatility

A number of recently published papers have focused on the problem of testing for a unit root in the case where the driving shocks may be unconditionally heteroskedastic. These papers have, however, assumed that the lag length in the unit root test regression is a deterministic function of the sample size, rather than data-determined, the latter being standard empirical practice. In this paper we investigate the finite sample impact of unconditional heteroskedasticity on conventional data-dependent methods of lag selection in augmented Dickey-Fuller type unit root test regressions and propose new lag selection criteria which allow for the presence of heteroskedasticity in the shocks. We show that standard lag selection methods show a tendency to over-fit the lag order under heteroskedasticity, which results in significant power losses in the (wild bootstrap implementation of the) augmented Dickey-Fuller tests under the alternative. The new lag selection criteria we propose are shown to avoid this problem yet deliver unit roots with almost identical finite sample size and power properties as the corresponding tests based on conventional lag selection methods when the shocks are homoskedastic.Unit root test, Lag selection, Information criteria, Wild bootstrap, Nonstationary volatility

Testing for a change in persistence in the presence of non-stationary volatility

In this paper we consider tests for the null of (trend-) stationarity against the alternative of a change in persistence at some (known or unknown) point in the observed sample, either from I(0) to I(1) behaviour or vice versa, of, inter alia, (Kim, J., 2000. Detection of change in persistence of a linear time series. Journal of Econometrics 95, 97–116). We show that in circumstances where the innovation process displays non-stationary unconditional volatility of a very general form, which includes single and multiple volatility breaks as special cases, the ratio-based statistics used to test for persistence change do not have pivotal limiting null distributions. Numerical evidence suggests that this can cause severe over-sizing in the tests. In practice it may therefore be hard to discriminate between persistence change processes and processes with constant persistence but which display time-varying unconditional volatility. We solve the identified inference problem by proposing wild bootstrap-based implementations of the tests. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the bootstrap tests perform well in finite samples. An empirical illustration using US price inflation data is provided

Sieve-based inference for infinite-variance linear processes

We extend the available asymptotic theory for autoregressive sieve estimators to cover the case of stationary and invertible linear processes driven by independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) infinite variance (IV) innovations. We show that the ordinary least squares sieve estimates, together with estimates of the impulse responses derived from these, obtained from an autoregression whose order is an increasing function of the sample size, are consistent and exhibit asymptotic properties analogous to those which obtain for a finite-order autoregressive process driven by i.i.d. IV errors. As these limit distributions cannot be directly employed for inference because they either may not exist or, where they do, depend on unknown parameters, a second contribution of the paper is to investigate the usefulness of bootstrap methods in this setting. Focusing on three sieve bootstraps: the wild and permutation bootstraps, and a hybrid of the two, we show that, in contrast to the case of finite variance innovations, the wild bootstrap requires an infeasible correction to be consistent, whereas the other two bootstrap schemes are shown to be consistent (the hybrid for symmetrically distributed innovations) under general conditions